I just don't get the love for OOTS

[Herobizkit]

For me, OOTS is like being able to watch a D&D game, which is the next best thing to playing. The characters are well-rounded and cover all of the generic stereotypes of adventurers, and their personalities have evolved long past the generic. The homour is well-thought out, and the "in-jokes" are just the kind of jokes a group might throw around in between the seriousness of their own games. I've always been havey into character development with a fair sprinkling of derring-do, and this comic has it in spades.

 

[Gort]

I used to read it pretty religiously back when it was a bunch of guys playing D&D and making jokes about the quirks of the rules system and how players interact with it ("hold on guys... I think I just failed a spot check", and how the wizard's familiar only exists when she needs to get a bonus from it, and so on).

However, when the guy ran out of jokes about that stuff and instead went off on a huge plotline that I find very hard to engage with and every page is a massive wall of text I stopped reading. I'll take a look back every now and then to see if he's stopped, but I don't hold out any hope.

 

[avin]

Ok, I'm one of the guys who doesn't like OOTS too much.

Some time ago I read it from start. Some good moments in general but 8 Bit Theater (Black Mage ftw!) is far more funny, for me.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Dude! It's D&D! But in comic form. That's double heaven for nerds.

I kind of agree with you JeffB. I read it from #1 to #600 or so and had had enough. The pictures and layout are beautiful. You can get into the story and follow the characters. But I don't think it's funny. The only strip I found funny was the one where they are saying the names of different polearms - 'glaive-glaive-guisarme-glaive' and stuff - and that was riffing off of Monty Python. I really don't like Belkar. The bard is too stupid to be believable. The only character I liked was that uptight paladin girl and she's dead.

The two funniest treatments of roleplaying I've seen are ab3's short stories and Fear Of Girls, which are both thoroughly excellent.

 

[billd91]

The bard is too stupid to be believable.

It's a comic strip. About a fantasy game. It has to be believable?!?

 

[Doug McCrae]

What rationale? You may like it, you may not. Maybe it works with your sense of humor, maybe it doesn't. If you don't like it, there's no point in us "rationalizing" why we do.

I've been reading it a long time and I have found it wonderfully entertaining the whole time. You apparently don't. No matter.

Don't you understand the internet *at all*? People that like different things than you do are WRONG!!

 

[Doug McCrae]

It's a comic strip. About a fantasy game. It has to be believable?!?

There's stupid and then there's stupid. He's just too stupid. And really childish too, it's like he's an unusually childish 4 year old or something.

 

[billd91]

There's stupid and then there's stupid. He's just too stupid. And really childish too, it's like he's an unusually childish 4 year old or something.

All of that makes him really good comedy material. Lucy Arnaz, Urkel, Gilligan, Sgt. Shultz, Mr. Haney, Eric Cartman, Cosmo Kramer, any character played by Groucho Marx, Niles Crane, and many, many other comedy characters that help to make their shows funny: How believable are they? In most cases, not very. But they're comedy gold because they're easy to produce humor with. Elan has a nigh-irrepresible sunny disposition and has more innocence than Belkar can shake a sword at. And he's dumb as a squirrel on most topics, except genre convention, at which he has brilliant insight. The potential for gags you can write on that, plus all the megagame concepts like intelligence dump stats, is awesome.

 

[crazy_cat]

Climbs into pulpit
Hello, I've got something to say Dearly beloved, here begins todays stuff lesson, and it is a grave serious lesson indeed.

Be you all aware that amongst us there are unbelievers *gasp*

Yes, it's true, people who have as yet to know the holy words as told by our prophet Rich through the parables of Elan The Chosen One, people who have as yet to see the light of our righteous beliefs, and are thus to be mocked damned considderd seen as infidels.

Beloved I say to you we must reach out to these heretics folks and bring them unto the fold if they are at all or in any way remotely interested for is not the chuch of Banjo the one and only true way....?

Oh yeah, and there's a free gift available for all new converts and for the person who converts them

Leaves pulpit and runs for cover

 

[fba827]

Some people love it, some people hate it, and some people fall somewhere in between.

And, looking at the threads (since that's what you're questioning) people just enjoy discussing the little bits of it (be it character choices, complaining about advancement of plot, or just sharing the chuckle they had over a joke).

To use as an example (*see note below), on these very same boards you have people that love a particular D&D edition, people that hate a particular edition, and others that fall somewhere in the spectrum in between. Yet every time there is an update on WotC's site there are usually 2-3 threads opened up for it (sometimes in "general" sometimes in the specific edition forum, and sometimes a double-up in either of those forums). And you have people jumping in to discuss the details of it. But you still have the other people who don't like that particular edition so they probably sit back and "don't get it" either when people open multiple threads about it minutes after it gets posted online or why people discuss it for page after page.

*Reference to editions used solely for illustrative purposes and not meant in any way to make this a discussion about edition preferences.

Same is true for several TV shows that get separate threads in the Media forum every week.

So, really, just some people like it, some people don't. Some people like to discuss it (good or bad) and some people don't. And a person can fall anywhere in that matrix.

Personally? I enjoy the strip. I don't always feel the need to discuss it unless I happen across a thread for it and such.

I do also see threads started whenever there is a D&D reference in other comic strips (like Fox Trot) it's just that such things happen with less frequency than in OotS which is a constant D&D reference.